Best Practice - Timesheets and logging time

What is an Adobe Workfront “best practice”?

Best practices are guidelines that represent an effective, efficient course of action; are easily adopted by you and the users at your company; and can be replicated successfully across your organization.

As you review these recommendations, please keep in mind that some Workfront best practices are universal while others might be more specific to the topic. Use these best practices as a framework to help guide your Workfront system setups and use.

Navigating this page

As you scroll through this page, first you’ll find a high-level list of all the best practices for the topic. This allows you to review the recommendations without diving into the details of “why.”

The “Why are these best practices?” area, found after the high-level list, provides greater detail into some of the best practices and why they’re deemed as a process, tool, etc., you should consider implementing with your Workfront instance.

Timesheets and logging time best practices

Why are these best practices?

Best practice

Limit the number of timesheet profiles.

Here’s why

Create timesheet profiles based on what general hour types are needed and who should approve the timesheets. It’s recommended to use the “Their Manager” option for approvers, rather than “Specific People,” to negate needing multiple timesheet profiles. (Make sure the Reports To field is filled out for your users, or Workfront won’t recognize they have a manager and the timesheet won’t have an approver assigned.)

Best practice

Keep the number of hour types to a minimum.

Here’s why

Too many hour types—for both billable and non-billable time—causes confusion about how time should be logged. Work with your organization’s Workfront governance/oversight committee to determine which hour types are required and which need to be reported on.

Best practice

Hide the Overtime field on timesheets if overtime isn’t tracked at your organization.

Here’s why

Because the Overtime field is filled in manually on timesheets, it can cause confusion for users about how and when they’re supposed to use it. The option to hide the Overtime field is part of the Timesheet Profile.

Best practice

Require timesheets to be submitted weekly.

Here’s why

This will provide better real-time reporting, providing results in weekly increments rather than bi-weekly or monthly. It also makes it easier to go back and fix problems before they get too far in the past.

Best practice

Log time daily to get the most accurate time entries.

Here’s why

It’s easier to remember what you worked on in a single day than trying to remember back several days. Accurate time entries contribute to more accurate project timeline planning, which then can:

Prevent burnout by making sure work requests fit with resource capacity.
Eliminate work bottlenecks or over-allocation by helping users plan and prioritize their weekly work.
Justify additional headcount so the organization’s strategic goals can be met.

Logging time also helps leadership acknowledge the efforts and accomplishments of your team.

Best practice

Turn off the ability to log time at the project level.

Here’s why

Time logged at the project level doesn’t show what the time was actually spent working on. Logging actual hours worked at the task and issue levels shows how long it took to complete specific items of work. This information can be helpful when adjusting project templates, as you’ll be able to more accurately plan the project timeline and plan for the people resources needed. It also means reports will be more accurate and provide better insight into where workers’ time is going.